Baltimore Cops 'Stopped Noticing Crime' After Freddie Gray Incident

USA Today (July 12, 2018) reported that "just before a wave of violence turned Baltimore into the nation’s deadliest big city, a curious thing happened to its police force: officers suddenly seemed to stop noticing crime. Police officers reported seeing fewer drug dealers on street corners. They encountered fewer people who had open arrest warrants. Police questioned fewer people on the street. They stopped fewer cars."

Baltimore police officers "stopped seeing crime" after facing harsh criticism — even from their own mayor — following the 2015 death of a man in their custody, Freddie Gray.

The Justice Department opened an investigation into Baltimore's police department at large and accused "Baltimore’s police of arresting thousands of people without a valid legal basis, using unjustified force and targeting black neighborhoods for unconstitutional stops."

Civil rights activists say they had hoped the DOJ's findings would encourage Baltimore's law enforcement officials to improve their policies... instead, fearful that they might be indicted for any wrong move, Baltimore's police force stopped moving at all.

“These guys aren’t stupid. They realize that if they do something wrong, they’re going to get their head bit off. There’s no feeling that anybody’s behind them anymore, and they’re not going to do it,” a retired officer told the paper.

The breakdown correlates with a rise in Baltimore's murder rate. Since Freddie Gray's death, Baltimore has become the nation's most dangerous city, and last year it set an all-time record with 342 homicides."
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There is no question that reports of misconduct within a police department need to be investigated, but one of the most toxic things a department can do is subject its personnel to long, drawn out, investigations in cases where allegations are questionable. When investigations become "witch hunts", this will almost certainly destroy the morale of the personnel within the department. When morale suffers, so too does performance on the street.

Police officers aren't perfect, and nobody should expect them to be. In most cases if officers make mistakes, those mistakes will be minor and something that can and should be handled at the supervisor level.

When a department allows investigations to become political, the officers in that department will stop doing their jobs, or leave the department for one with a less toxic environment.